NOTE: DEDICATED TO REFERENCING THE PECCADILLOES AS WELL AS THE BENEFITS VIS-A-VIS THE ENTERPRISES OF PEOPLE, INSTITUTIONS, THE MEDIA, RELIGIONISTS, AND GOVERNMENT, RECOGNIZING THAT MY FEET, TOO, ARE MADE OF CLAY AND PREPARED FOR THE ACCUSATION THAT MY HEAD IS FILLED WITH IT, BUT REVELING IN THE FACT THAT IN THE U.S. FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS GUARANTEED EVEN TO THE “LEAST OF THESE,” MEANING ME. Check out new collection: "AVENGED & Other Poems."

Thursday, May 28, 2015

Wacky Legislation

The legislature this year in Kentucky heaved itself into near hernia-mode in order to regurgitate what its supporters and at least one major media outlet consider wondrous life-saving laws, to wit, making available a drug called Suboxone (buprenophrine and naloxone) and clean needles to dope-heads in order to keep them from killing themselves. This action might even have been as important as the laws passed to make domestic stuff such as restraining orders available to teenage shack-ups who get in arguments they can't handle peacefully...the nanny-state in action.

Circuit Judge David Tapp of Somerset, Ky., in an article surprisingly published in the Lexington Herald-Leader, sort of blew the whole drug thing out of the water. He deals with these people every day and knows whereof he speaks, an important part of which is simply that exchanging one narcotic, Suboxone, for another merely redirects the path to self-destruction. The whole nine yards has to be financed by taxes so the citizens can feel good about saving humanity.

The most dangerous drug/narcotic to both self and others is alcohol but the solons in Frankfort, many topers among them, can't get exercised about finding a drug to stop the drunks from killing themselves and/or other people on the highways or, especially in the cities, with their Saturday-night-specials. Vis-a-vis the drug action, though, they probably would come up with something like legislating Old Grandad in favor of Four Roses in order to get sober, with the added boon of no needles needed.

The judge, using the stats, explained that the so-called drug remedial measures don't work anyway. People are still getting stoned by the bushels and crack-babies are still being damned into existence by women who subscribe to the “numero uno” philosophy and their old studs who just don't give a damn. Between 2000 and 2012, the newborn addicts increased by 2,741%, to 824, and those were just the ones identified in hospitals. A lot more will be discovered when they enter school if they live that long.

The judge didn't mention the needles, but it's a lead-pipe cinch that when a dope-head has a passion for a fix he'll use whatever's available from whoever's available at the time, even if the needle has been passed around through the whole county. The notion of AIDS and Hepatitis will not enter his foggy mind or the fact that anyone else such as wife or child will be affected when he brings in some germ or other or in his craziness afflicts bodily harm or decides to throw the baby in the well. The state's got him covered—either Suboxone, clean needle, or Eddyville.

The judge mentioned that the only way to discover if a drug-recipient is ingesting or injecting properly is via very expensive drug-testing, paid for by the taxpayers, of course. One wonders what would happen if the legislature, instead of pandering to the diversity crowd insisting that everyone be spared from himself, just pass legislation to the effect that every user is officially on his own by a date certain and that his only help will come from an undertaker when he's through with his self-destruction. After all, there's no law against suicide.

The judge mentioned that Medicaid in Kentucky paid about $27.6 million, second highest medicinal cost, for buprenophine products last year. Folks, at least most of the time, can't help getting sick and need medicine—no argument with that. But the ineffective dope-stuff costs could be eliminated altogether if other folks were told to “Just say no,” at least when they're in their close-to-right minds occasionally. Drunks are told to either do the 12-step thing with AA (mind over matter) or hurt themselves or others. Druggies are told to look to the state—your back is covered. The stupidity is obvious.

Oh yeah...the drug thing is necessary because it saves money in the long run, cutting the costs by keeping druggies alive and well currently, thus guarding against big-time costs later when they have to be institutionalized account fried brains and wrecked bodies. Egad!

About Me

I'm just an old guy who's been watching the scene for quite a long while, having come along just in time for the Great Depression. Those who are unfamiliar with that term are welcome to look it up. Though not scholarly by nature, I still managed to finish college (though not in four years or even five) and have been fortunate in getting to engage in a diversity of occupations - construction/farm laborer, U.S. Navy, newspaper sportswriter and columnist, radio disk-jockey and sportscaster, schoolteacher, full-time "church worker," railroader - and so I've had the opportunity to see things from both the white- and blue-collar perspectives, as well as those of the sacred and secular. Reading, writing, and music are my passions. The most intensive of my passions, however, is reserved for the writing of hymns.